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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 23, Volume 8 Number 3, January - February 1982.

Two Poems Tony Harrison

for David Hockney

The Californians read the sky aloud.
The Pasadena HAPPY turns to cloud!

My desk top's like a Californian pool.
Practice mirrors from the ballet school,
meditation group, karate class
dodge or lay doggo in my desk-top glass,
but the opposite gymnasia both let through
enough clear sky to flood the desk with blue
which, like purposeful deletions, smoketrails cross.

Such smoketrails would have been of sphagnum moss
if these aeroplanes were floats displayed
at Pasadena's New Year Rose Parade,
and in the air, plus HAPPY, there'd appear
as HAPPY starts dissolving, the NEW YEAR.
The seven puffs of white that made the Y
...


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